Statement of the Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile on March 10

posted Mar 10, 2015, 6:15 PM by The Tibetan Political Review

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March 10, 2015 9:01 am

Today is the 56th anniversary of the momentous day in 1959
when the Tibetan people rose in a peaceful, spontaneous uprising for
freedom and to protest the oppression of communist China in Tibet’s
capital Lhasa. It is also the Tibetan Martyrs’ Day, dedicated to the
patriotism of the heroic men and women of Tibet. On behalf of the
Tibetan Parliament in Exile, I would like to commemorate with great
ferventness the patriotic men and women of Tibet who had sacrificed
their all, including their very lives, for the religion, polity and
people of Tibet, and to express solidarity with those who continue even
today to suffer oppression and torture under the policy of violent
repression of the communist party government of China.

Immediately after establishing the so-called People’s Republic of
China in 1949, the communist Chinese government entertained an ambition
to gobble up Tibet in its entirety, including the land and people of
this ancient Snowland. With this end in view, it launched an armed
invasion through successive onslaughts through the borders of all the
Three Provinces of Tibet. It resulted in hundreds of thousands of
Tibetans being killed. Besides, the invading Chinese devised a plot
which posed an imminent danger to the life of Tibet’s supreme temporal
and spiritual leader, His Holiness the Dalai Lama. It was when the
Chinese were on the point of carrying out this diabolical plot that on
10th March 1959, thousands of Tibetans rose in a spontaneous
protest demonstration across the Lhasa city, targeting the communist
government of China and the Chinese occupying forces. This is indelibly
etched in the history of Tibet as a vital evidence of the events of that
time. While it remained in occupation of Tibet, the communist
government of China resorted to distortion of Tibet’s history and its
sovereignty. It took to amalgamating Tibet’s culture with its own
despite the fact that the two were entirely incompatible, thereby
seeking to destroy its unique identity. It deprived the Tibetan people
of their religious faith and freedom. It vandalized and recklessly
exploited Tibet’s territory and its resources, thereby setting out to
destroy the environment of the Tibetan Plateau. It trampled on the
Tibetan people’s rights as human beings and put an end to the Tibetan
people’s freedom of speech. In the name of economic development, it
carried out vicious colonial practices. It sought to destroy the ethnic
integrity of the Tibetan people by splitting them up. And it treated
with contempt the aspirations of the Tibetan people. Apart from carrying
out a litany of such abuses, China has never implemented in Tibet a
policy that genuinely addressed in a meaningful manner the real
conditions there. Rather, it invariably adhered to a policy of violence
and brutality. Because of this vicious policy, there has never been a
period through generations both old and new when peaceful Tibetan
protests against Chinese rule ever came to an end. The Chinese
leadership should understand that it is impossible for the peaceful
Tibetan protests to come to an end so long as there is no just
resolution of the issue of Tibet.

Since assuming the temporal and spiritual leadership of the Snowland of Tibet, His Holiness the Great 14th
Dalai Lama has taken a series of initiatives designed to reach a
settlement on the Sino-Tibetan dispute, keeping in mind the interests of
Tibetans both in Tibet and in exile. His outstanding efforts directed
at reaching a just solution to the issue of Tibet has been well
recognized by the international community which honoured him with more
than a hundred prestigious awards, including the Nobel Peace Prize.
Nevertheless, successive leaderships of China have invariably taken
recourse to nothing but subterfuge, never even remaining true to their
own words. Apart from numerous other breaches of faith, they did not
respect even the so-called 17-Point Agreement which was entirely
dictated by them and which they forced the Tibetan side to sign at the
point of their gun. After putting the entire blame for all the excesses
of the Cultural Revolution on the Gang of Four, China began implementing
the so-called policies of opening up and liberalization. However, these
were only in name when it came to Tibet, for it has never, thus far,
implemented any policy there that is in any substantive way beneficial
to the local Tibetan people. It was therefore not surprising that in
1987 the second generation of Tibetans who were said to have been
nurtured and brought up under the Red Flag of China and in 2008 the
third and so on led protests which were widespread and took place on
successive occasions in all the three traditional provinces of Tibet,
including in the city of Lhasa. In particular, available information
suggests that from 2009 to 5th March, 2015, a total of 136 Tibetans
immolated themselves in acts of protest against Chinese rule. Of them
117 were known to have died. Developments and incidents such as these
shows that Tibet, which was once a religiously endowed land of peace and
tranquility has now become something like a slaughterhouse, filled with
weapons of violence and bloodshed. The basis for this is, of course,
the policy of violent repression pursued by the government of China and
the attitude of the Chinese government leaders. The communist Chinese
government’s policy of violent repression has led to the death of more
than 1.2 million Tibetans. Besides, the tragedy of the situation in
Tibet today is such that it still remains impossible for anyone to
estimate how many Tibetans still remain imprisoned and suffer torture of
such severity as a hell on earth.

Since 1959, governments, parliaments, non-governmental organizations
and numerous other bodies and leaders across the world have held
discussions and passed a series of resolutions on the just cause of the
Tibetan people, as well as provided economic assistance and so on. These
have been of invaluable fraternal help towards the internationalization
of the issue of Tibet and our gratitude to them for their support for
our just cause remain limitless. Nevertheless, in substantive terms, the
main responsibility for achieving a solution to the just cause lies
with the Tibetan people ourselves and we must rise to the challenge of
discharging it. No cause remains to issue any further urging when it
comes to talking about the courage and determination shown by the
Tibetan people inside Tibet. Including His Holiness the Dalai Lama, most
of the top leaders of the four great schools of Tibetan Buddhism and of
the Yungdrung Bon religion as well as many others who had carried out
temporal and spiritual leadership roles in Tibet managed to escape into
exile. In order to be able to preserve, defend and spread the substance
of the Tibetan religious traditions and Tibetan culture in the free
foreign countries and places, including India, institutions such as the
Central Tibetan Administration, complete with the three pillars of
democracy were established. Settlements providing safe and secure homes
for Tibetans living in exile were built. And flourishing religious
centres complete in all respect as places for carrying out prayer
services, engaging in practices and imparting religious education, were
established. Publicity efforts were made to raise awareness about and
understanding of the just cause of the Tibetan people while both modern
education and traditional knowledge were imparted to all the Tibetan
youngsters living in exile. In such ways it was ensured that, unlike any
other community of political refugees across the world, the Tibetan
people stood out with excellent accomplishments both religiously and
politically. Nevertheless, the new generation of today must prove itself
up to the task of carrying forward the accomplishments and aims of the
older generation. All sections of the Tibetan people must therefore make
concerted efforts by assuming responsibilities in an all-round manner
and without any shortcoming. In particular, it must be understood that
the most important essence of the life of a people is its linguistic
culture, both spoken and written. All the young Tibetans in exile in
general, and especially the Tibetans youngsters growing up in Western
countries, must make special efforts in learning the Tibetan language
and script. Otherwise, there is a real big danger of facing a situation
where Tibetans do not know their own language. We must look up to the
young Tibetans in Tibet for the kind of efforts they are making towards
protecting the Tibetan linguistic heritage under the violent repression
of the Chinese government. It is important for us to make efforts to
ensure that we do not become Tibetans who are ashamed to call ourselves
Tibetan.

While ruling the country over the past several years, the new leaders
of China have been contending that in order to govern China, the border
areas should be governed well; that for the purpose of administering
the border areas properly, stability must be ensured in the Tibetan
regions. Through the use of such remarks, tens of thousands of Chinese
officials were sent as work teams to all the Tibetan inhabited areas,
including in the Tibet Autonomous Region. Such team members took up
long-term residence within the Tibetan communities, including in the
monasteries, and began carrying out surveillance on the activities of
the local Tibetans day and night. In doing so, they harassed the
monastic communities by rendering them unable to devote their times to
prayer services and religious studies. They began exercising tight
controls and restrictions on the local Tibetan people’s political
rights, freedom of speech, their day-to-day occupational pursuits, their
freedom of movement, and so on. This situation continues even today. In
addition, using its ongoing anti-corruption campaign, China has also
been making all kinds of criminal accusations against many Tibetans for
such alleged violations as being followers of the so-called “Dalai
separatist clique”. Subjected to such diverse kinds of harassment and
persecution, Tibetans are deprived of all freedom to campaign for
anything connected with their just cause. The situation in Tibet
continued to remain grave and tragic in 2014, leading to continued
protests, including through self-immolations, by the Tibetan people.
There was also no let up in China’s reckless exploitation of Tibet’s
mineral resources and the destruction of the environment. Not a week
passed without there being at least one arrest or imprisonment of a
Tibetan. The actual history of Tibet continued to be distorted in
documentaries shown over state television channels. Tibetans were
executed by being fired on by special armed security forces. The
prevalence of gross inequitable treatment, including through ethnic
discrimination, in this so-called great Chinese motherland ensured that
achieving stability in the Tibetan areas was virtually impossible. Also,
in their reports in 2014, many international human rights monitoring
organizations explained that the situation in Tibet had continued to
remain critical. Given this background, we would again like to make an
emphatic call on the Chinese leadership to implement a policy of seeking
truth from facts and of being true to their own words in addressing the
situation in Tibet.

It is also important that we the Tibetan people living in exile
should continue to carry out campaigns without any let up in connection
with the issue of Tibet. It was with this understanding that during
2014, members of the Tibetan Parliament in Exile, including the Speaker
and Deputy Speaker, were divided into groups and travelled to many
countries both in the East and West to meet with political leaders,
including parliament members, and prominent public figures. They briefed
those leaders and influential public figures with information about the
critical situation in Tibet today, including on the continuing
incidents of protest self-immolations. These visits and meetings also
included making efforts and presenting a range of appeals to garner
support for the Tibetan issue and yielded appreciable results. In
particular, members of the Tibetan Parliament in Exile met with more
than 100 lawmakers who had just recently got elected to the 16th
Lok Sabha, or Lower House, of the Indian Parliament, and successfully
lobbied for the re-launch of the All-Party Indian Parliamentary Forum
for Tibet, the Tibet Support Group in the Indian Parliament, and it has
already begun its work.

There is absolutely no change in our resolve to seek a negotiated
solution through the middle way approach, which is mutually beneficial
to China and Tibet, as a part of our efforts to resolve the current
critical situation in Tibet and the wider issue of Tibet. We would
therefore like to reiterate our call on the leadership of the People’s
Republic of China to give up engaging in a blame game and, instead, make
use of the opportune moment today to enter into a peaceful Sino-Tibetan
negotiation with the urgency the issue deserves.

I would also like to take this opportunity to express immense
gratitude to the countries, organizations, and private individuals –
including especially the government and people of India – who have been
extremely kind in giving support on the issue of Tibet and in providing
humanitarian and other forms of assistance to the Tibetan people living
in exile.

Finally, as we are all aware, the Kashag of the Central Tibetan
Administration had declared 2014 as the year for remembering the
gratitude we owe to His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Therefore, the Tibetan
Parliament in Exile also takes this opportunity to express immense
gratitude for every bit of the infinite concerns His Holiness the Dalai
Lama has shown and the deeds he has accomplished for the benefit of the
Buddhist faith as well as all sentient beings. And we again pray with
single-minded devotion that the lord of the entire corpus of the
Buddhist faith and sentient beings of the three realms remain steadfast
in continuing to live for a hundred eons.

The Tibetan Parliament in Exile

Dharamsala

10th March, 2015

Originally published at http://tibet.net/2015/03/10/statement-of-the-tibetan-parliament-in-exile-on-the-occasion-of-the-56th-anniversary-of-the-tibetan-national-uprising-day-of-10th-march-1959/